Fight or Flight
by NRATQH
Summary: But it doesn't make these moments any easier. It doesn't make it any less painful to sit by his eldest brother's bedside and watch the trailing ECG monitor beep at every fragile heart beat that thrums in his brother's chest as Donnie does everything he can to keep it from going flat.-Donny contemplates their life and his family's sacrifice to a world that won't accept them.-


There's a commonplace belief in their family that they are all stronger together. Built upon one another like layers of stone and brick. When standing together it's easy to believe it, that they need each other to survive. Because in a world where none of their kind exists, whom else can they rely on but each other?

By the age of thirteen it was a belief that had solidified its place in Don's mind. A piece of reality and truth that was as unwavering as the sun rising and setting each day. A teaching wrapped around his heart, unchallenged by other layers of logic, reasoning, or even experience that might have suggested otherwise. Because if he felt so safe among his brothers how could it be anything but true.

Donatello's 16 now and it's a perspective that he's begun to hate. To resent. Be embittered by and deflect, because his brothers keep getting hurt. They keep coming home scarred. Ruined. Haunted and shadowed, and Donatello believes they're each at fault.

Don't get him wrong. He loves his family more than anything in the world. Like any of his brothers, he's willing to spill his blood to prove it. He has. And so have his brother. And that's the problem.

Because they can't function without each other. They can't stand to be apart. They've built their foundations so close together in what little space they have that now none of them can stand alone or pull away without causing each other to fall. And while it wasn't their fault that their dependence on each other was so entrenched in their being, it didn't make things easy.

Because family was never meant to be something that was tied to you forever. It was meant to support. To hold up. To aid. Not to be held together by force. And it is by force. Because Donatello knows that without a doubt his brothers each have their own dreams. Their own wants. Their own desires. Each of them have looked up at the stars or a kindling fire and seen a future for themselves that was their own. That is how it should be, or at least would be if their circumstances had been different. If they had perhaps- in a different universe - been born different. Human. Normal.

But they're not. And as much as it's not an opinion that his brothers share, Don doesn't really feel like he owes the world anything. Let alone New York. He loves his city, but the gangsters and mobs and the Foot clan were never meant to be his or his family's responsibility. They were never meant to be his family's burden. But they are and with that come other worries that trail from bullets or the edges of steel and he hates it.

It's unfair in more ways than one. In fact, 'unfair' would have been to be born crippled or blind. Unfair would have been to be born penniless or without a roof over their heads. Unfair would have been to be born in any circumstance that is even slightly better than theirs. What they have instead is the accumulation of all the bad luck in the world being piled upon one family, because it wasn't enough that they were born mutants in a world that could never accept them, but even worse they are responsible for the fate of a city and a people that didn't even know they exist. A city that would most likely turn them away even if it did.

And he hates it.

Though Don knows that at the very least it's a statement that his eldest brother would not disagree with. Even further, at times he wonders if Leo had reached the same conclusion even before he had. He knows that it's partially why his big brother is driven the way he is to protect them. To shelter them, guide them. To make sure they live to see another day even if it's at the cost of his own time.

And Don hates it.

Because he knows Leo is also doing what he does because he feels it's the only option that's open to them. Because he's too kind to deny their father or the city and too good to let his brothers suffer for the choices he makes for their sake.

But it doesn't make these moments any easier.It doesn't make it any less painful to sit by his eldest brother's bedside and watch the trailing ECG monitor beep at every fragile heart beat that thrums in his brother's chest as Donnie does everything he can to keep it from going flat.

It _never_ makes it any easier. Instead, Donny feels that it's gotten harder. Because every time his brothers get hurt he has to wonder if they have enough blood bags to replace the precious liquid they'd lost. He has to hope that the antibiotics he has stocked in his lab will be enough to hold back the infections he knows are coming because they live in a damn sewer. He has to pray that this time he won't have to cut open wounds any wider than they already are to fix an internal injury he knows he is in way over his head to fix.

He knows it and he hates it and there are days he wants to do nothing else but bring his bō crashing down on the many hospital machines he's accumulated over the years. Destroy every one and live in denial of a world where none of them are needed. It's a wish he's held at bay from the first time he had to sneak into a hospital and steal saline drips to keep his little brother alive for just one more week for the antibiotics to kick in. And it's one he knows his brothers may never understand.

Because Raph -for all his anger and fierceness- loves the city too much to abandon it, loves the feeling of being of use, of value, even to a city that will never know he exists. And even if he had felt the same way, neither him nor Mikey have the darkness in them to go through nights wondering if there was any chance he could whisk them away somewhere they'd be safe. Let loose ends tie up on their own or become frayed. Be damned the world and its needs. His brothers come first. Before duty. Before responsibility. Before whatever it dares to demand because his brothers owe the world nothing and they never will because they were born with nothing and the world has given them nothing that they hadn't had to sneak and steal away. Nothing except for scars and memories that leave them twisted and screaming in their sleep.

So Don sits by his brother's bedside and he waits and he watches the beep of the heart monitor rise and fall. Praying one more time, through a long night that will join the many he's experienced before, that this won't end in a way that will push him to do exactly what he longs to. Wondering if he should anyway, even if Leo wakes up. Imagining how easy it would be load his family into the van and drive till he could see the horizon. Leo would understand, Leo wouldn't stop him.

But Leo wouldn't leave with them.

Too honor bound. Too kind. Too good. Too idiotic to realize that his life matters more to them than the responsibility he feels he owes this city, all because of a family feud they had no hand in starting.

But he will. Because his brother is honorable and Don is not. Maybe that's what holds him back… The idea that maybe he can be just as honorable as his brother. Worthy of the love and affection he showers on them all so limitlessly without thought, no matter what they do.

No matter how many arguments Raph raises against him or times Donny and Mikey both disappoint him. Because Leo is Leo, and if there's anything that urges him to be what he's expected to be, it's his brother. Because Leo understands that no matter how much it pained them, they are stronger together and as much as Donny hates it, he knows that strength is what they need. And for now he can only hope that it will be enough. It has to be.


End file.
